Unmanned aerial devices are aerial devices, aerial vehicles, or drones without a human operator or pilot aboard. Such aerial devices have multiple degrees of freedom, including translational motion (such as longitudinal, lateral, and vertical) and rotational motion (such as pitch, roll, and yaw). Translational motion typically changes the position of the aerial device, and rotational motion typically changes the orientation of a multi-degree gimbal carried by the aerial device. For aerial devices lifted or propelled using four rotors, which are often referred to as quadrotors, two rotational motions are coupled with two translational motions (such as pitch-longitudinal motion, roll-lateral motion, etc.). This results in a total of four degrees of freedom, such as pitch-longitudinal, roll-lateral, vertical, and yaw.
The position of the aerial device and/or the orientation of gimbal is typically controlled remotely, such as with a remote controller, a mobile computing device, a smartphone, a tablet computer, and/or other suitable hand-held device. The hand-held device has a plurality of buttons that, when actuated, controls the movement of the aerial device. For example, the remote device may have a control interface including two directional buttons (such as positive and negative buttons) for each of the four degree of freedom movements, amounting to eight total directional buttons. In addition, for aerial devices having an onboard optical system including a camera mounted on the multi-degree gimbal, the control interface may include additional buttons for controlling the orientation of the camera. With this configuration, an operator is often faced with the challenge of learning all of the buttons on the control interface and with having to actuate multiple buttons at the same time to control the position of the aerial device and/or the orientation of the gimbal.
This disclosure is aimed at solving the problems identified above.